1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to techniques for testing computing devices. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for compliance testing communication protocols supported on resource-constrained computing devices.
2. Related Art
The explosive growth of the Internet has fueled the demand for Internet-connected devices such as PDAs and cell phones. Initially, these devices were simple; they could send and receive simple text messages, as well as browse special text-only web sites. Over the years, these devices have become much more complex and are able to perform tasks that once required a much larger desktop computer. Many of these devices on the market today support numerous protocols and have built-in platform-independent virtual machines which allow them to run numerous platform-independent applications.
As these devices become more complex and support an ever increasing number of protocols, compliance testing becomes increasingly more important to ensure that the protocols supported by the device adhere to standardized protocol specifications. Note that applications that perform compliance testing need to be sufficiently large to test the functionality implemented on the device. Unfortunately, these devices typically provide only limited computing resources for running such compliance testing applications. Cell phones, for example, typically have small screens, small amounts of memory, limited processor power, and in many cases, limited communication bandwidth. More often than not, the resources available on the computing device are insufficient to perform a complete compliance test.
What is needed is a method and an apparatus for compliance testing computing devices without the problems mentioned above.